The described technology relates generally to automated report generation, and more particularly, to methods and systems for automatically generating a quality enhancement project report.
In today""s competitive business environment, companies are continually searching for ways to reduce costs. At one time, it was widely held that the cost of producing defect-free products outweighed the benefits. Today, however, it is generally accepted that producing defect-free products at the outset is less expensive than responding to an occasional defect later. Consistent with this philosophy, a number of different quality enhancement programs have come to the fore in recent years to help companies increase the quality of their products. Continuous Process Improvement, Design for Quality, and Six Sigma are but three examples.
Six Sigma is a quality enhancement process that focuses on designing and monitoring everyday business activities in ways that minimize waste and resources while increasing customer satisfaction. Six Sigma provides specific methods for analyzing and improving processes so that defects and errors never arise in the first place. The phrase, xe2x80x9cSix Sigma,xe2x80x9d actually refers to a statistical measure of process capability that indicates how well the process is performing. For example, a process that is performing to a three sigma capability would experience 67,000 defects per million defect opportunities. In contrast, a process having a six sigma capability would experience only 3.4 defects per million defect opportunities. Thus, one goal of the Six Sigma quality enhancement process is to drive process capability to a six sigma level. Another goal of the Six Sigma process is to standardize the methods and processes that result in six sigma quality, then integrate these standard methods and processes into the design cycle so that future products will have them built-in.
There are eight fundamental stages, or phases, to achieve six sigma quality in a process, division or company. They are recognize, define, measure, analyze, improve, control, standardize and integrate. The five core phases are define, measure, analyze, improve and control. The define phase involves defining the processes that contribute to the functional problems. The measure phase involves measuring the capability of each process that offers operational leverage. The analyze phase involves analyzing the data to assess prevalent patterns and trends. The improve phase involves improving the key product/service characteristics created by the key processes. Finally, the control phase involves controlling the process variables that exert undue influence on process performance. A detailed description of the core phases of the Six Sigma process can be found in numerous references, such as Rath and Strong""s Six Sigma Pocket Guide, second printing, January 2001.
Implementing some process improvements can be costly. Hence, companies will often want to evaluate the results of a Six Sigma project before implementing a process improvement to ensure the results merit the expenditure. This evaluation process often calls for project participants to devote a significant amount of time and energy to preparing a project report for presentation to their management. These reports are frequently prepared in a number of different formats using a number of different software applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Visio.
This approach to generating a Six Sigma project report has a number of drawbacks, not the least of which is the time and effort required on the part of the project participants to xe2x80x9ccut and pastexe2x80x9d project results and other data into a format that can be quickly and easily understood by their management. The amount of effort required by this approach can also lead to low project completion rates, and can discourage future participation in Six Sigma projects. Another drawback to this approach is that different projects will often use different report formats, making it difficult for management to perform consistent evaluations or compare the results from one project to the results of another. Therefore, a simplified process for generating a Six Sigma project report would be desirable.